When I am planning on free motion machine stitching on a piece, I like to practice a little bit first. Usually I practice on a small piece of felt or even plain interfacing. So when I was working on my tamarack piece, I needed to practice the leaves.

Here is the finished piece with the leaves in the upper right hand corner. I was going for a more abstract approach and decided to try some zig zag stitch for the leaves and “straight” free motion stitch for the branches. I practiced with different thread colors on a piece of nuno felt.

Here’s the finished greeting card that I created from the small scrap of FME practice. I added a piece of painted paper behind it and stitched it down with zigzag around the edge. I love to make cards from whatever is laying around in the studio.